Sunday, May 3, 2009

I swear this will be the last thing I do before I write the final that's due tomorrow. I swear.

I wanted to write because I sense something huge on the horizon for Jack and Kate. I no longer hold much expectation that there's necessarily a baby looming in their near future--although there absolutely should be. No, my hopes for the last two episodes are simple; in fact, they boil down to a single scene.

In my opinion, there's really no use telling a story about time travel if you can't change the past. Why else would you time travel? To go back and observe events of the past? Um, hasn't Lost been doing that ever since we saw the very first flashback?

With two episodes left in the season, I finally feel engaged with the show. Because I find myself asking questions that are actually interesting and have weight for the characters we care about.

Questions like--if Jack does manage to keep "the incident" from happening, what does that mean? Does the button never exist? Does Oceanic 815 never crash? Does Desmond end up on the island? (Does Desmond end up on the island, but on an island full of Hostiles or DHARMA folk or whoever?)

If you're me, you're asking, do Jack and Kate never meet?

Hence the scene of epicness. We've seen in the promo that Kate tells Jack, if this doesn't work, everybody dies. But if it does work? Girl, you're going to jail. In Iowa.

In many ways, yes, the plane crash effing sucked. But in a lot of ways, they're better for it happening. (It's that whole redemption thing.)

Jack found his destiny.

Jack let his father go.

Jack met Kate.

I sense this has to come up, and I feel like Kate has to be the one who says, "Hold on a minute, we shouldn't do this." And then Jack says something wonderfully epic to the tune of, "I will always know who you are."

It hearkens back to that old Jabrams quote: "You could put Jack and Kate on a New York City street and have them pass each other at rush hour on a Wednesday morning, and they would stop and turn, slowing to watch each other go by. They know each other within the context of a universal recognition. They have met before this life. And they will meet again in another."

The tone would be similar to the scene pictured above from "The Man from Tallahassee." The die's been cast, the future is unknown, but some things don't change.

As for the rest of the last two episodes, who the hell knows?

I'm so happy that I've spent the last few days actively discussing the finale. Will we find ourselves in some bizarre alternate universe, where Oceanic 815 didn't crash? (No, we think, because that would render the last five years irrelevant, and no one wants that.)

If that happened, would our crew be left with the memory of their time on the island, both in this decade and in the 70's?

What does this mean for dead people, like Locke and Christian Shephard?

What does this mean for Claire, who I'm convinced is The Fork in the Outlet?

As usual, I'm at a loss. But I'm pretty confident, at least, about this one scene of awesome.

One response to “Lost: The Context of a Universal Recognition”

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